After an 87-83 win over the Southern Utah University Thunderbirds on Saturday, the Wildcats are now 13-14 on the season and 5-9 in conference play, with four games remaining.

“We want to be playing our best basketball in March, late February and March, and hopefully we’re doing that, I don’t know,” head coach Brette Tanner said. “I don’t think we played great Saturday. But we found a way to win, and that’s the most important thing.”

The conference record puts ACU fifth in the Western Athletic Conference standings, putting them 1 1/2 games behind the University of Texas-Arlington and 1/2 games ahead of Tarleton State and Southern Utah University.

In Saturday’s game, the Wildcats had five scorers finish with double-digit points, led by Cbo Newton, redshirt sophomore guard from Ruston, Louisiana, with 16 points. Followed by:

• Bradyn Hubbard: 15 points
• Rich Smith: 14 points
• Christian Alston: 11 points
• Cade Hornecker: 10 points

With two seconds remaining and an 85-83 lead, Smith was intentionally fouled and made both free throws to put the game away for the Wildcats.

After winning its last three of four games, ACU now goes on the road to Utah, where the Wildcats will face the Utah Tech University Trailblazers on Thursday and the Utah Valley University Wolverines on Saturday.

“We got three in a row on the road and against good teams,” Tanner said. “But look, man we’ve gone out there and competed before. I think we’ll give it our best shot. I think we have some confidence right now. So, hopefully we’ll carry that to Utah with us.”

UVU holds the first spot in the WAC standings with UTU just a game behind in second place.

These matchups will be the third and final time ACU will see these two teams, except if ACU matches up with them in the WAC tournament. The Wildcats have yet to beat UTU this season, losing 79-64 on Jan. 1 and 76-70 on Jan. 29, both times at home.

Utah Tech outscored ACU in the first half, but ACU outscored Utah Tech in the second half in both games. This also happened in Saturday’s game as well against Southern Utah, scoring 38 points in the first half and 49 points in the second half.

Tanner said he yelled at his team during halftime on Saturday when they were down.

“They knew Saturday that I was right,” he said. “That we had to get out of our own way a little bit.”

After the road trip to Utah, ACU will travel to California to face California Baptist University on March 5 before traveling back home to end the regular season against UTA on March 7.